Nationwide SNAP Violation Lawyers

Somerville Snap Violation Lawyers

If you’re a retailer who accepts EBT at your grocery store, then you might have gotten a official notice from the USDA. This notice is probably a SNAP violation notice, which is stating you have violated the SNAP program. The government will attach a number of pages to the SNAP violation letter, which will contain transactions that occurred at your store that the USDA is saying is in violation of one or more genres of violations.

The first thing after you get a SNAP violation letter, you should contact our legal team. Remember, you have only ten days to respond to the letter. If you choose to ignore, the government will suspend your stores privilege to take EBT.

About The Program

This program helps families with money each month. The SNAP program benefits are distributed to consumers through an EBT card. The SNAP benefits on the EBT card are not for general usage, and they cannot be used for cash back services. The cards took the place of food stamps in the 1990’s and the card is issued by each state individually where the recipient lives. This program is operated on a national level by the federal government.

The federal and it’s benefits are under handled by the US Code and the Code of Federal Regulations. The USDA FNS agency enforces the regulations and runs the program.

What counts as a SNAP violation

SNAP legal violations occur if and when a retail store is in violation of the rules below.

The grocery store is accused oftrafficking SNAP benefits. Examples of this is fraudulently accepting the benefits, or stealing the benefits.

Your grocery store took SNAP benefits in exchange for nonfood items like alcohol, tobacco, or other goods.

The store submitted false info on your grocery stores application to accept EBT benefits.

Your store redeemed more coupons than food sales at the same time.

The employees of the store accepted SNAP benefits from someone who shouldn’t be allowed to use the benefits.

How we can help defend you against a SNAP violation notice

Spodek Law Group has immense experience managing SNAP violation letters. Our law firm can handle your SNAP violation process in all 3 phases of a SNAP action.

The charging letter is the initial step taken by the USDA to remove your right to take EBT benefits. The letter can come with no warning and can appear at any time. The violation letter contain details about alleged violations, but most of them will lay out serious allegations, with an attachment of details. You have only 10 days to respond. After you hire our law firm, our lawyers take into their hands all of the communicationswith the USDA and for compiling all the necessary evidence, and drafting a response to the USDA.

After reviewing the store’s answer to the notice of violation, the USDA might still believe that your store has violated the rules. If that happens, the USDA will 100% issue a second letter that outlines their legal verdict to suspend or disqualify the store based on the allegations set forth. Like before, you have ten days to protest the decision. If you don’t, you’ll be stuck with the USDA decision. Once you hire our law firm, our team the necessary paperwork to notify them we are going to appeal their decision. Our lawyers gather necessary evidence, and our team will draft an appellate brief which contains all of the case law, legal evidence, etc. which is critical to fix the outcome.

In the event the USDA refuses to override the decision, in the Administrative Review, our lawyers will file a Judicial review at the local Federal District Court. This process is like a normal court case, where you’ll have to do standard processes like discovery, file motions, and have a trial. Our law firm can handle these cases in all 50 states.

SNAP Violations

As a grocery store retailer, there are many laws have to obey in order to accept EBT. In most normal situations, many retail store owners have no problems adhering to them. However, SNAP can be tricky. SNAP handles the Electronic Benefits Transfer Card, and has limitations. For example, SNAP recipients cant purchase electronic goods. If you violate the laws, you’ll probably get a SNAP violation letter. Penalties of violating SNAP can result in severe and business crushing penalties. If it’s believed you did a serious SNAP violation, then you may end up with either a permanent or temporary disqualification. In most cases, owners of grocery stores didn’t even know the violations were even occurring. In many situations, it’s dishonest employees are misusing the SNAP EBT program. It’s helpful to consult with a SNAP violation attorney to ensure sure you don’t have your benefits revoked.

When a charge letter is sent to your grocery store, you have only 10 days to respond to the claims. Your failure to respond to the allegations will permanently harm your store. In addition, the USDA will deliver a verdict even though you don’t respond to the allegations. Without legal experience, you cannot defend your store. Retaining a SNAP violation lawyer gives you the ability to fight for your rights. Our lawyers can challenge the decision of the USDA and appeal any penalties. The penalties imposed can be huge – to the tune of ten’s of thousands of dollars. The USDA on purpose imposes huge fines to in order to curb future violations. The USDA look to see if you have a store compliance policy. It must be in writing at the store and the policy must be at the time the allegations were filed.

The store owner must be able to prove the compliance policy was in place before the charge, and was not drafted after the violation letter. The USDA will also look in order to check if the grocery store owners benefited from the violations, or if the business owners were aware of the fraud. If the managers were involved, it can lead to disqualification.

We highly recommend any store owner that gets a violation letter consult with a SNAP violation attorney. Choosing not to respond in negative consequences. The USDA is required by Congress to issue a disqualification for a period of up to 5 years. This can result in huge losses which are hard to recover from.